SOC 2 Readiness Without Enterprise GRC Spend

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Customer Type: Early-Stage Startup Pursuing First SOC2 Report

Primary Framework(s): SOC 2 (plus optional ISO alignment)

Workflow Type: Policies + Findings → Control Coverage → Auditor-Ready Evidence

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Customer Profile

• Small team pursuing SOC 2 due to enterprise customer requirements
• Currently paying (or evaluating) expensive compliance tooling
• Needs to conserve cash while staying credible with auditors

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The Challenge

• Full-suite GRC subscriptions were hard to justify on a startup budget
• Limited bandwidth to do manual mapping and evidence prep
• Needed to prove control coverage to auditors without heavy tooling
• Wanted flexibility to implement only what’s necessary

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How They Used CMAI

• Mapped existing policies and security findings to SOC 2 controls
• Identified coverage gaps and prioritized only required remediation
• Used mapped outputs as audit artifacts for control-to-evidence traceability
• Evaluated a “mapping + selective monitoring” approach vs full-suite spend

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Implementation Pattern

Policies + Findings → CMAI API → SOC 2 Coverage + Gaps → Audit Packet + Remediation Plan

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Results Delivered

• ‍95% Cost Reduction vs full platform approaches (typical target)‍
• Faster Time-to-SOC2 through automated mapping‍
• Flexibility to implement only what’s needed‍
• Future-Proof Evidence Workflow: when ready, they reuse the same CMAI mapping process to auto-tag evidence and control coverage as it flows into their compliance management platform (so onboarding to a platform later is faster and cleaner)

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Why This Was a Fit

They needed a lightweight way to produce credible SOC 2 artifacts without committing to enterprise-priced platforms.

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Want to map your current posture to SOC 2 and see gaps fast?

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Drop-In Compliance Annotation (Universal Pattern)

CMAI is deployed as a stateless API inside existing pipelines to automatically tag findings, policies, and questionnaires with structured control mappings—without requiring platform migration or centralized data storage.

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